I catch myself doing it again – watching him from behind these walls I’ve built. They’re made of glass now, not the solid brick-and-mortar I started with when we met. At least I can see through them, even if I can’t quite bring myself to break them.
He’s patient, more patient than anyone has ever been. When I flinch away from vulnerability, he doesn’t push. When I deflect intimacy with practiced jokes, he sees right through them but laughs anyway. He waits.
Sometimes, I wonder if he knows how many times I’ve almost said it—those three words that stick in my throat like honey crystallized by fear. My tongue remembers the taste of them turned bitter, promises made by others who treated my heart like a temporary shelter rather than a home.
Every gentle touch, every remembered detail about my day, every quiet moment of understanding chips away at my defenses. But then the memories flood back: midnight conversations that turned to morning silence, passionate declarations that cooled to polite distance, doors that closed and never opened again.
“Trust me,” he whispers, and God, I want to. I want to believe that his consistency isn’t an act, that his kindness isn’t a prelude to cruelty, that his love isn’t a loan with impossible interest. My heart and mind wage war—one seeing the truth in his eyes, the other replaying old battles lost.
The walls are thinner now. Sometimes, when he looks at me with those eyes that see straight through to who I am beneath all this armor, I can feel them trembling. Like they know their days are numbered. Like they know that someday, maybe soon, his unwavering presence will finally prove stronger than my well-practiced absence.
I’m learning that maybe love isn’t about being fearless. Maybe it’s about being terrified and taking one step forward anyway. Maybe it’s about letting someone hold your shaking hands while you dismantle your own fortress, one glass brick at a time.
And maybe, just maybe, when the last wall falls, I’ll find that I’m not the only one who’s been waiting for this moment. That he’s been building something too—not walls, but a foundation. Something strong enough to catch me when I finally let myself fall.
